The Belmont Saga: One Mess After Another

Memo from the L.A. Unified School District, September 2007: Belmont High School welcomes the class of 2011!

You are among the fortunate few selected from many applicants to attend this high-tech citadel of learning. Not only does Belmont boast a fine curriculum, thanks to the innovative Belmont-

Caltech teaching partnership, but we offer something extra:

Belmont is blessed with rich underground deposits of methane gas, and scientists have put that natural wealth to good use: on the ground floor across campus are fuel conversion units that heat and cool Belmont’s buildings tapping that same methane gas.

And best of all--as far as our students are concerned--Belmont is the nation’s only high school with its own outdoor barbecue facilities! Thanks to these same methane deposits, campus food services offer rotisserie barbecue foods cooked on methane-powered grills. On wintry days, some of our teachers have been known to organize “study cookouts,” roasting marshmallows outdoors while doing classwork.

So, bon appetit--and let the learning begin!

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Here’s a winter’s tale of two hills, one about faith, one about the loss of it:

On Fort Moore Hill, the slow-swinging arms of cranes ceaselessly lift and lower, lift and lower, raising up the archdiocese’s new cathedral. You can watch them at work from Crown Hill, a dozen blocks away. On Crown Hill all is quiet. The buildings are built, if not yet finished. Green tarps, graffitied in white like frosting squiggles atop a cupcake, hang from cyclone fences encircling the place. The fence isn’t high enough to conceal the words cut into the concrete wall at the front: Belmont High School, founded 1923.

And foundered 1999, they could add--the year when the politics of Belmont blew as sky-high as a build-up of the methane beneath it might one day do.

I don’t know what the site study of the cathedral showed; if there’s methane under there, maybe the architect has plans for an eternal flame. But Belmont, one hill over, stands as an environmental mess compounded by a political one--and now, who knows, perhaps a criminal one too.

The newly elected D.A., Steve Cooley, is setting up a Belmont task force. “The Belmont case files are being reopened to look at possible criminal prosecution,” says Cooley’s spokesman, Joe Scott. “That’s what we’re talking about here.”

(So far the only recriminations I know of were on the order of parochial-school knuckle-rapping: Nine senior school district employees were blamed for the Belmont mess. Four departed on their own steam. Five others just came back to work after being punished with paid administrative leave for a year. Think of it: “Shame on you! Now clean out your office and go home. Get some rest, take a trip, paint the garage, and let that be a lesson to you!” It’s possible the Belmont buck stopped higher up than the Belmont Nine, but it had to pass through several sets of hands to get there.)

The man overseeing that Belmont task force is Anthony G. Patchett, who’s been brought out of retirement. I knew Patchett as assistant head deputy of the D.A.’s environmental crimes division. He was once a sheriff’s deputy. He kept a picture of himself with Pete Wilson on his office window sill. Pollution-wise, hiring Patchett may be like hiring the wrath of God.

What, we have to wonder now, could the city get first: Belmont indictments or a Belmont graduating class?

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The cathedral shares space on Fort Moore Hill with the school district headquarters, where for two years the question has been “Who lost Belmont?”

For the new superintendent, Roy Romer, the question has become “How to save Belmont?” Some Latino leaders and parents have demanded that the district do something so their kids can go to school there. (There’s a touching reservoir of faith that any city savvy enough to bring--OK, steal--its water from 230 miles away can figure out how to get the methane out.)

Others want to cut the losses and sell the monstrosity. So by a vote as close as the Supreme Court’s, the school board told Romer: Use it or lose it. Fix it or dump it. Pay someone to make it safe. Let some business buy it and clean it up and lease it back to us. Something.

The wild card is Mayor Richard Riordan. When he leaves office in July, he’ll be going to the school district, and there, unencumbered by the ballast of City Council or city rules, he could decide to tear off his mayor suit and leap into the Lycra of a superhero to try to save the day. He might just pull it off. That won’t be an “S” on his chest though; it’ll be a dollar sign.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.